My Library

In a chamber on the third floor, actually one half of someone's former bedroom, was a tray suspended about two feet from the high ceiling. One needed a ladder to get up to it and place "targets" on the tray, completely out of sight from anyone on the floor of the room. Just beneath the tray was a chair and a lot of wires (electrodes) leading through a small hole in the partition into the other side of the former bedroom. This was the kingdom of Janet Lee Mitchell, then Osis's research assistant. The electrode wires led into a Beckman Dynograph, a brainwave recorder. The procedures and the goal of the experiment were thus. The subject was to sit in the chair and have the numerous electrodes attached to the scalp. A blood-pressure instrument was attached to one finger, and this, too, fed information into the Dynograph. Hooked up this way, the subject had very little in the way of freedom of movement. He couldn't stand up, or all the leads would become disconnected. The head had to be kept still, or the muscle movements of the neck and head introduced artifacts into the brainwave recordings. In this position, the subject was supposed to go out of body, float up the fourteen feet or so to the ceiling and then look down to discover what the concealed tray targets were. After, or while, doing so the subject was to narrate the sightings into a tape recorder in Janet's kingdom but with the small microphone attached to some place near the mouth. The decor of the room was bland, and of such ugliness that it wouldn't have served as suitable chamber in the most disgusting brothel in the world. The partition dividing the